Done
by Blue Zombie
Summary: Penny takes a look at her life and her failed acting career and vows to take steps to change her fate.


I woke up late, later than usual. It was almost 11. I could see the sun shining full force through the curtains. I could feel the thick cotton dryness of my mouth and tongue, every taste bud seemed to be standing straight up in its own desert. My head throbbed from the cheap wine. But cheap was all I could afford and with the way things were going I was going to drink.

The way things were going. I stood up, getting a sharp pain right between my eyes for my efforts. Maybe it was time to think seriously of how things were going. What was I doing about my acting career? I stumbled out into the little kitchen and grabbed a water from the fridge, drank it fast even though it tasted horrible. I was just trying to rehydrate.

My acting career? That was hardly accurate. I'd been in nothing. A play above a bowling alley, a production of "Rent" that no one attended, a commercial. Three things. Countless auditions, but not lately. I couldn't seem to bring myself in for the inevitable rejection.

I made coffee with my eyes half closed, the headache whiplashing around my skull. There was something I wasn't facing, hadn't been facing as I got myself buried in my routines. This acting thing wasn't working out, and things of this nature didn't work out for everybody. Maybe I didn't have talent, or luck, or skill. Something. I was remaining one of the out of work actors bringing burgers and fries to people day after day. This hadn't been the plan. The plan was to waitress for a short time and then find success as an actress. The plan had fallen apart, it had crumbled around the edges, it imploded.

The truth was I felt like a failure. The truth was being around all of my genius friends wasn't really helping. I knew what they did. They might not think I was smart enough to understand, and I didn't grasp the details, but I could see the big picture. They were all highly educated and making differences in their fields. They all published articles in different scientific journals. They had all been interviewed at one time or another by newspapers or magazines or local T.V. news shows. Raj was in "People"! Sheldon and Leonard were always being chosen to receive one award or another. Howard had gone to space! He was an astronaut! He was an astronaut and I couldn't even get into a local play at the community theater, and I was supposed to be an actress. They all were what they said they were, scientists, discoverers, pioneers. I was nothing.

I sat on the couch and felt my head throb, listened to the hissing and burbling of the coffee brewing. I had to work tonight, and not developing the character arc of my role in whatever. I would be putting on a uniform that was so constricting that when I wore it I felt like I couldn't breathe, and I would be taking orders and delivering food like a servant. Maybe a servant was all that I was capable of being.

I couldn't do this anymore. I couldn't fool myself into thinking it would all work out and that my big break was right around the corner. I couldn't deliver food anymore. I couldn't drink until I passed out when the lies fell down around my head like they tended to do as the nights wore on. I was done.

The coffee was ready and I took my throbbing, aching head into the kitchen to pour myself a cup of it. What did being done mean? Things had to change, that was clear, but how? I was stuck in a rut, an easy rut, going to my job where I knew everybody and the work was familiar, borrowing money off of Leonard and Sheldon because they loved me and didn't want me to move, but they both knew I couldn't afford this apartment without their help.

Leonard and Sheldon paid for almost everything. My pay from the Cheesecake Factory didn't even equal my rent. Sheldon paid the rest of my rent, Leonard gave me money for groceries, Sheldon included my phone in his phone plan, I used their WIFI, I ate their take-out.

Something had to change, something had to give. I was 27 years old and I was nowhere. I lived in a one bedroom apartment that I couldn't afford and I went to auditions that never came to anything, and I drank too much, and I didn't know where I was going.

I sipped my coffee, kept the T.V. off. The blank screen faced me, looking so strange without the familiar images traipsing across it. This could be my first moment toward something different, something real. I had to re-prioritize my life, I had to look long and hard at what I wanted and what I was doing. I had to put my head down and be ready to work.

I wasn't a genius like all of them, like Sheldon and Leonard and Howard and Raj and Amy, and maybe even Bernadette. Was Bernadette a genius? But she got a doctorate, so she was probably smarter than me. Genius didn't matter. I had to focus, I had to think my way out of this rat maze. I could do this. I'd go to work today and think about it. I could do what Sheldon had done that time, menial tasks to free my whatever to think about my real problem. Just because I didn't know the name for it, whatever he called it, that didn't mean that I didn't understand what he had been talking about and what he had done, and what Einstein had done when he worked at the patent office.

It was time to get it together. I'd do my menial tasks to think about my real issues, and when work was done I wouldn't stop at the bar and have a drink that would lead to another and another and another. Tomorrow I would wake up early with a clear head and continue to think, to plan, to take the steps that would free my soul from the chains I had somehow forged with ignorance and naiveté.


End file.
